Poet Natalie Diaz Visits Hopkins

Hopkins was honored to host poet Natalie Diaz on Thursday, March 9 and Friday, March 10 for a series of readings and events on campus.

On Thursday evening, Diaz attended a special reading in Heath Commons, open to the Hopkins and New Haven communities. She read her own poetry and answered audience questions. On Friday, she started the day by speaking at assembly to the gathered community. She engaged students with readings of her own poetry, played some of her favorite music, and told a Mojave story about dog tails to wake up the school. (Hopkins community members can log in to watch the full assembly in @HOP).

 

Following assembly, Diaz graciously engaged with students and English classes throughout the morning in a Q&A in the Calarco Library, and a poetry workshop in the Weissman Room. Many thanks to Joe Addison, English Department Chair for arranging this incredible opportunity to learn from Natalie Diaz in a community celebration of poetry. 

 

Natalie Diaz is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She is the author of When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press, 2012) and Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf, 2020). A 2018 MacArthur Fellow, Lannan Literary Fellow, Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow, and United States Artists Ford Fellow, Diaz is Director of the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands and the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University.

 

In her poetry, Diaz explores the physicality of language, intricacies of translation, themes of extraction, imaginations of land, and limits of empathy. In a recent interview, Diaz noted, “I don’t know that poetry is a home. I believe it is one pathway home, either to return me to home or to carry me to a home that doesn’t exist yet.”

Click here to browse all event photos.